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The Elfish Gene - Another attack on gamers


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I have also read this and enjoyed it. the author does have the viewpoint that he somehow "survived" his D&D past, but other than that I found it humorous, often histerically so, and also a window back into my highschool days. Scary and wonderful as they were.
 


'Well, at least you don't play Dungeons and Dragons' , one of them said out of the blue. 'Those guys who do that are really screwed. They'll never get a girl'.

The ultimate solution to that scenario would have been to "seal the deal" as it were (hopefully with the speaker, preferably with BOTH) and as soon as the deal is sealed to pull out your MM and ask them for help on this weeks adventure.

DS
 

Well if you'd asked me two days ago for my opinion of The Elvish Gene, I'd most likely have been non-commital. (And perhaps gone back to pondering the seven week-old mystery of why sales of my novel Game Night suddenly spiked sharply upwards on 1st November for no apparent reason).

But having found out that the Elvish Gene's Amazon.com page is recommending that potential purchasers of that book also buy Game Night...

SmokingGun-Sm.JPG


...and presumably has been since... (oh, look that book came out on November 1st!) I am now firmly of the opinion that Mark Barrowcliffe (a.k.a. houndstooth) is quite simply one of the finest human beings who ever lived and I simply won't hear a word said against him*. I really would recommend that everyone here check out the Amazon.com page for his book.

*The author of this post reserves the right to change this stated opinion should the Elvish Gene's Amazon sales ranking at any point fall below 30,000.

:)
 

Read It

Read it over the last several days. Liked it, but the end left me sad. Like Billy (the main character in the book besides the author), I'm a bit disappointed in the end that Mark (the author) doesn't play anymore . . . it doesn't need to be all about arguing and and one-ups-manship, as he saw with Billy.

To me, some of it was familiar, some of it was an insight to the origins of D&D slightly before my time (Mark started playing in 1975 as a wargamer, I started in 1981 as a neighbor asked me to play with him and his brother), and some of it was an insight into England in the 1970s -- which was actually quite interesting stuff.

The only D&D thing I had to look up while reading it, to see if Mark got it right, was the Mirror of Life Trapping. He did, though I think it's too big to carry around . . . but who knows, maybe a Portable Hole was used or something. I thought a lot about how Mark handled the situation (as DM) where it was used . . . a hopeless situation socially, but as DM, I would have tried to somehow have the mirror smashed to get back the character sucked into it. I've actually only seen a player kill another PC once, for a very good reason, and I agree with the action (and kicking out the other player). Those decisions do seem to be based on who the DM likes better.

Anyhow, I'm thinking about "rescuing" the trapped character in my campaign, just because I can. I've had characters from Gary's campaign ocassionally traipse through mine, so why not do the right thing for this poor, old, "famous" and stranded character?

As for how Mark ended up leaving the game, wow, I feel his pain on that one. Ouch.

Oh, the story about Llandudno, that's the only one I had trouble believing. Bus stop "dryads"? Really? Life was never like that in small town rural New York.

For the rest of it, not very similar to most of my gaming experiences, but I can definitely see it happening, and it seems many people here have had similar experiences/attitudes.
 

Like none of us ever hid our hobby?
Nope, never. Also never understood why anyone would.
Like none of us ever felt kinda weirded out when people asked us what we did on a Saturday afternoon?
Nope, never.

I find people who go to church regularly weird. And they do that every Sunday!
Looks an awful lot like the Forty Year Old Virgin to me.
I'm not a virgin, are you?
 

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